NRA Leader Wayne LaPierre's Much-Criticized Sandy Hook Speech Was Actually Quite Effective

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

actually the shroud is the forearm - it keeps the shooter from getting their hand burned by a hot barrel. the flash suppressor is what you're referring to.

eta: i've also never known anyone to be injured by a bayonet lug either.

I was about to explain the same to him. Ironic they want to ban all guns that have the capability to attach a knife to them >>> The sheer stupidity of that is numbing

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Gun sales are up 40% since Obama took office. Good for employment. So who is a better promoter of firearms products?

[Robby999 1,024]

This is what happens when your government establishes strict gun control. You get to beg your allies for weapons to save your a$.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

What is the purpose of the NRA? Why does it exist?

To protect Constitutional rights from a bunch of liberal door knobs who want to turn the US into another USSR.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Anyone who understands exactly WHAT an assault weapon is as defined by the 1994 bill will never see any logic to a cosmetic ban.

This rifle features a pistol grip and a muzzle shroud making it an assault weapon. The pistol grip is ergonomics, and the shroud keeps the shooter from being distracted by the flash...it doesn't hide it from view. Remove those to features and its a normal rifle again.

This rifle has identical capabilities but is not an assault weapon

Forgive my amateur understanding of what is or isn't an assault rifle, but there are more than just cosmetic differences. If their weren't, then they wouldn't be standard issue for the military. The AR15 was developed and designed for combat situations and can withstand firing off hundreds of rounds without jamming. They take a lot of abuse without breaking down.

And then just from an amateur's eye - you can fire the AR15 from the waist vs. having to put it up to your shoulder, making it significantly easier to fire off many rounds quickly. Again, it was designed for that purpose.

The actual firepower, velocity and range is not the issue. The issue has to do with assault rifles that make it very easy to fire off a lot of rounds in a very short amount of time with minimal effort.

[Karee 4,191]

I just saw on a CBS news break that Brownells (a manufacturer of the AR-15) sold 3 years worth of AR-15s in 3 days.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Forgive my amateur understanding of what is or isn't an assault rifle, but there are more than just cosmetic differences. If their weren't, then they wouldn't be standard issue for the military. The AR15 was developed and designed for combat situations and can withstand firing off hundreds of rounds without jamming. They take a lot of abuse without breaking down.

And then just from an amateur's eye - you can fire the AR15 from the waist vs. having to put it up to your shoulder, making it significantly easier to fire off many rounds quickly. Again, it was designed for that purpose.

The actual firepower, velocity and range is not the issue. The issue has to do with assault rifles that make it very easy to fire off a lot of rounds in a very short amount of time with minimal effort.

Not so. The AR15 is nothing more than a knock off of the M16. The M16 is full auto...or used to be, it's three round burst only now, and the the AR15 is a semi auto. As far as them being durable ...that's ####### also. They were complete Mattel junk when I was in the service and they had a major issue when it came to jamming. You had to constantly clean it or it would jam on you. That's one of the reasons the AK47 had it all over the M16.

It's looks that deceive the people who don't know about guns.

This is an M1 carbine down below. It has it all over the AR15 seven ways to Sunday but it doesn't look as cool as the AR15.

This is the AR15 which looks totally cool to some people but unless they made some major changes to it over the years I wouldn't own one. The M16 was junk and this is nothing more than the semi auto version of the M16.

This is a "kit car". It has a Ford 302 in it although most of them used to use Volkswagon engines. Looks can be deceiving.

[DaveE 178]

Forgive my amateur understanding of what is or isn't an assault rifle, but there are more than just cosmetic differences. If their weren't, then they wouldn't be standard issue for the military. The AR15 was developed and designed for combat situations and can withstand firing off hundreds of rounds without jamming. They take a lot of abuse without breaking down.

And then just from an amateur's eye - you can fire the AR15 from the waist vs. having to put it up to your shoulder, making it significantly easier to fire off many rounds quickly. Again, it was designed for that purpose.

The actual firepower, velocity and range is not the issue. The issue has to do with assault rifles that make it very easy to fire off a lot of rounds in a very short amount of time with minimal effort.

Please please stop - did you actually say fire from the waist? I spent thirty years in the military including two tours in Vietnam and one in the gulf war. Never in my life have I see anyone fire from the waist. However, I have seen it in a lot of movies.

I collect military weapons and have several M1 Carbines, M1 Garands, and AR-15s. Every single parameter that designates an assault weapon from any other semiautomatic rifle with detachable magazine, is cosmetic. In the AR-15 world that is why we have two designators; preban and postban. CT never lifted the assault weapons ban, they kept the Federal ban in place. The Bushmaster used was a postban model and perfectly legal in CT. Bushmaster removed the flash suppressor and the bayonet lug, and that is the only difference.

The AR-15 has become the most popular rifle in the U.S. for many reasons. First among these is that it is no longer just a single purpose rifle. In 15 seconds I can convert my AR-15 to a 22 long rifle for plinking. Another 15 second change and it is a 6.8 SPC caliber for deer hunting and feral hogs, another quick change and it is a .223 for service rifle competition shooting.

What has happened though is the largest gun panic buy in U.S. history is taking place as we speak. There are virtually no AR-15s left to buy. Where there was 4 million in the country there are now probably 5-6 million.

High capacity magazines are gone. Brownells, one of the largest vendors in the country, sold a 3.5 year supply in 72 hours.

My local distributor had 150,000 last week and is backordered now.

What one side of the argument doesn't want to admit, is that there is no way to realistically prevent what happened in CT. Virtually any person who wanted commit that crime could have done it with their little Ruger 10/22, and a couple of magazines. Unless you are willing to ban semiautomatic firearms you are treading water.

I refuse to call anyone names or crticize their intent. I am just stating the situation as I see it.

Edited December 24, 2012 by DaveE

[james&olya 1,121]

Some highlights:

freedom of the people to have arms for their own defence and as allowed by law

Right there you have it. Even SCOTUS right-wing justice Scalia has recognized that congress may restrict assault rifles and high capacity magazines by simple majority vote! The NRA and its noisy supporters will increasingly be recognized by most sane Americans as having blood on their hands if they somehow continue to succeed in intimidating our spineless congress into acquiescing to their extreme agenda!

[one...two...tree 2,762]

A conservative case for an assault weapons ban

If we can't draw a sensible line on guns, we may as well call the American experiment in democracy a failure.

By Larry Alan Burns

Last month, I sentenced Jared Lee Loughner to seven consecutive life terms plus 140 years in federal prison for his shooting rampage in Tucson. That tragedy left six people dead, more than twice that number injured and a community shaken to its core.

Loughner deserved his punishment. But during the sentencing, I also questioned the social utility of high-capacity magazines like the one that fed his Glock. And I lamented the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban in 2004, which prohibited the manufacture and importation of certain particularly deadly guns, as well as magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

The ban wasn't all that stringent — if you already owned a banned gun or high-capacity magazine you could keep it, and you could sell it to someone else — but at least it was something.

And it says something that half of the nation's deadliest shootings occurred after the ban expired, including the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. It also says something that it has not even been two years since Loughner's rampage, and already six mass shootings have been deadlier.

I am not a social scientist, and I know that very smart ones are divided on what to do about gun violence. But reasonable, good-faith debates have boundaries, and in the debate about guns, a high-capacity magazine has always seemed to me beyond them.

Bystanders got to Loughner and subdued him only after he emptied one 31-round magazine and was trying to load another. Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter, chose as his primary weapon a semiautomatic rifle with 30-round magazines. And we don't even bother to call the 100-rounder that James Holmes is accused of emptying in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater a magazine — it is a drum. How is this not an argument for regulating the number of rounds a gun can fire?

I get it. Someone bent on mass murder who has only a 10-round magazine or revolvers at his disposal probably is not going to abandon his plan and instead try to talk his problems out. But we might be able to take the "mass" out of "mass shooting," or at least make the perpetrator's job a bit harder.

To guarantee that there would never be another Tucson or Sandy Hook, we would probably have to make it a capital offense to so much as look at a gun. And that would create serious 2nd Amendment, 8th Amendment and logistical problems.

So what's the alternative? Bring back the assault weapons ban, and bring it back with some teeth this time. Ban the manufacture, importation, sale, transfer and possession of both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Don't let people who already have them keep them. Don't let ones that have already been manufactured stay on the market. I don't care whether it's called gun control or a gun ban. I'm for it.

I say all of this as a gun owner. I say it as a conservative who was appointed to the federal bench by a Republican president. I say it as someone who prefers Fox News to MSNBC, and National Review Online to the Daily Kos. I say it as someone who thinks the Supreme Court got it right in District of Columbia vs. Heller, when it held that the 2nd Amendment gives us the right to possess guns for self-defense. (That's why I have mine.) I say it as someone who, generally speaking, is not a big fan of the regulatory state.

http://articles.lati...ns-ban-20121220

[Ban Hammer 13,508]

Forgive my amateur understanding of what is or isn't an assault rifle, but there are more than just cosmetic differences. If their weren't, then they wouldn't be standard issue for the military. The AR15 was developed and designed for combat situations and can withstand firing off hundreds of rounds without jamming.

really? why do you think they have a forward assist?

They take a lot of abuse without breaking down.

And then just from an amateur's eye - you can fire the AR15 from the waist vs. having to put it up to your shoulder, making it significantly easier to fire off many rounds quickly.

to an amateur, sure. strange how i never saw that in my service time except in hollywood movies.

Edited December 24, 2012 by charles!

[Ban Hammer 13,508]

This is an M1 carbine down below. It has it all over the AR15 seven ways to Sunday but it doesn't look as cool as the AR15.

and one of the major complaints about it was the .30 cal ammo didn't have enough velocity to make it as a combat rifle.

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

Not so. The AR15 is nothing more than a knock off of the M16. The M16 is full auto...or used to be, it's three round burst only now, and the the AR15 is a semi auto. As far as them being durable ...that's ####### also. They were complete Mattel junk when I was in the service and they had a major issue when it came to jamming. You had to constantly clean it or it would jam on you. That's one of the reasons the AK47 had it all over the M16.

It's looks that deceive the people who don't know about guns.

This is an M1 carbine down below. It has it all over the AR15 seven ways to Sunday but it doesn't look as cool as the AR15.

This is the AR15 which looks totally cool to some people but unless they made some major changes to it over the years I wouldn't own one. The M16 was junk and this is nothing more than the semi auto version of the M16.

This is a "kit car". It has a Ford 302 in it although most of them used to use Volkswagon engines. Looks can be deceiving.

exactly. So few understand what is going on around them in the "assault weapon" debate

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

Forgive my amateur understanding of what is or isn't an assault rifle, but there are more than just cosmetic differences. If their weren't, then they wouldn't be standard issue for the military. The AR15 was developed and designed for combat situations and can withstand firing off hundreds of rounds without jamming. They take a lot of abuse without breaking down.

And then just from an amateur's eye - you can fire the AR15 from the waist vs. having to put it up to your shoulder, making it significantly easier to fire off many rounds quickly. Again, it was designed for that purpose.

The actual firepower, velocity and range is not the issue. The issue has to do with assault rifles that make it very easy to fire off a lot of rounds in a very short amount of time with minimal effort.

Your right you don't understand.

1. Obviously you have never fired a AR-15 much. Al arge part of Infantry training was how to clean it and clear jams. Actually they don't take a lot of abuse. Little bit of dirt in the M-16 and it will jam.

2. Fire from the hip ?? You got to be kidding. Did you say that in public. No one that had 5 mins of training would do that in a tactical situation. It would greatly reduce accuracy and combat effectiveness. The M-16/AR-15 wasnever designed to be "Hip" fired.

Too many people with your level of understanding, are getting their gun info from MSNBC ,CBS, and Rambo movies. The assault weapon ban is absurd.

[himher 634]

LOL@fire from the waist

You're not kidding. There are no mags in stock anywhere.

Not much ammo either. Gun show had a line all the way around the convention center yesterday.

I've never seen anything like it. Ever.

Please please stop - did you actually say fire from the waist? I spent thirty years in the military including two tours in Vietnam and one in the gulf war. Never in my life have I see anyone fire from the waist. However, I have seen it in a lot of movies.

I collect military weapons and have several M1 Carbines, M1 Garands, and AR-15s. Every single parameter that designates an assault weapon from any other semiautomatic rifle with detachable magazine, is cosmetic. In the AR-15 world that is why we have two designators; preban and postban. CT never lifted the assault weapons ban, they kept the Federal ban in place. The Bushmaster used was a postban model and perfectly legal in CT. Bushmaster removed the flash suppressor and the bayonet lug, and that is the only difference.

The AR-15 has become the most popular rifle in the U.S. for many reasons. First among these is that it is no longer just a single purpose rifle. In 15 seconds I can convert my AR-15 to a 22 long rifle for plinking. Another 15 second change and it is a 6.8 SPC caliber for deer hunting and feral hogs, another quick change and it is a .223 for service rifle competition shooting.

What has happened though is the largest gun panic buy in U.S. history is taking place as we speak. There are virtually no AR-15s left to buy. Where there was 4 million in the country there are now probably 5-6 million.

High capacity magazines are gone. Brownells, one of the largest vendors in the country, sold a 3.5 year supply in 72 hours.

My local distributor had 150,000 last week and is backordered now.

What one side of the argument doesn't want to admit, is that there is no way to realistically prevent what happened in CT. Virtually any person who wanted commit that crime could have done it with their little Ruger 10/22, and a couple of magazines. Unless you are willing to ban semiautomatic firearms you are treading water.

I refuse to call anyone names or crticize their intent. I am just stating the situation as I see it.

I'm waiting for them to come after my A303 and I really am partial to that dam gun

I was about to explain the same to him. Ironic they want to ban all guns that have the capability to attach a knife to them >>> The sheer stupidity of that is numbing